AT the Northeast high school in Macon, Georgia, teenagers who studied hard last year earned cash, film tickets, restaurant vouchers and iPods as rewards for their efforts. Jessie Humphrey, a 15-year-old pupil who scored top marks in all her exams, walked away with a 26in flatscreen television, courtesy of a school incentive programme aimed at encouraging academic effort.
Some critics have denounced this type of programme as de facto bribery of children who should instead be taught the value of learning for its own sake. Teachers and parents have warned that America’s enthusiasm for showering schoolchildren with cash may have dire long-term effects on the pupils it is trying to help.
Yet the debate over classroom pay-for-performance has taken a startling turn with the publication of the first study of the impacts of cash incentives on disadvantaged high school pupils, some of whom pocket several thousand dollars in rewards by the time they go to university.
“This evidence suggests that [incentives] may confer lasting, positive and large effects on student achievement in college,” concluded Professor Kirabo Jackson, a Cornell University economist who studied a privately funded Texas programme adopted by more than 60 schools.
The initial success of the Texas advanced placement incentive programme in raising standards by offering salary bonuses for teachers and cash rewards to pupils who got good marks in their exams has prompted a flood of imitators.
Similar programmes have been adopted in a dozen states from new Mexico to new York where, at some inner city schools, 10-year-olds can earn up to $250 and 13-year-olds up to $500 a year for improving their grades.
Humphrey was one of 25 teenagers at her Macon school who scored a grades in every exam, earning them cash and places in a raffle for the television set and other prizes. In Texas some schools pay $50 for each a grade in basic subjects, $35 for a B and $20 for a C.
“When the kids get the cheques, there’s that competitiveness,” said Rosie Marie Mills, a middle school principal in one of new York city’s poorest neighbourhoods. “It’s something that excites them.”
For supporters of the so-called “learn-and-earn” programmes, that is the intended result — more motivation, more ambition and a better chance for poor children from broken homes to compete with the offspring of middle-class parents, many of whom consider expensive rewards for exam success to be a natural rite of passage.
“Wealthy parents in the suburbs — they give their kids a car,” noted Richard M Daley, the mayor of Chicago, where a privately funded incentive scheme was introduced for low-income pupils in 2008.
Yet for many Chicago children, he added, “some of them have nothing. Some don’t even have parents. They’re lucky to get Christmas gifts”.
James Purnell, the former work and pensions secretary, had discussed incentive schemes during a visit to new York in 2008. but British officials have said it is “too early” to consider introducing similar incentive programmes to schools in the UK.
Critics have complained that while such schemes might generate early success, the improved performance comes at a price. Barry Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, has warned that “once kids become accustomed to this, they will become dependent … they will want to make sure they are rewarded for everything they do”.
Kevin Dunning, director of a Las Vegas high school, said the purpose of education should be to “develop a love of learning”. Pupils need to find “something that will spark a passion in them that they’ll start to explore as they go into adulthood. and ‘passionate’ and ‘pay’ don’t mix”.
Yet Jackson’s findings appear to vindicate champions of the incentive programme, who have long argued that for all the government’s efforts to improve academic standards, school drop-out rates have remained high for pupils from low-income families.
Jackson found that pupils who benefited from the Texas high school programme not only went to college in greater numbers, but also continued to improve their grades and remained in college longer.
His 46-page report finds “no evidence of worse outcomes” and concludes “that incentive programmes may have lasting positive effects even after rewards are no longer provided. Providing monetary incentives to both students and teachers … can lead to meaningfully improved student outcomes”.
US pupils pocket iPods and cash as schools pay them to learn
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